pigeonholes. It was tied with her class colours and marked "From
Sophia Gordon." "She was my best friend at school," explained Helen,
"and my roommate for three years; but being in the class just below
me, she had to go through her senior year without me. These letters
were written during that time. I have a reason for asking you to read
them. Perhaps you will be able to discover it before I come back."
With a smile and nod to Olive, and a light kiss on Sara's cheek, she
left them to amuse themselves during her absence in any way they
chose.
"You read the letters aloud while I make the chocolate," said Sara, as
the door closed behind her sister. "We can do the other things
afterward."
"There is a photograph in this one, of a girl about your size, Sara,"
announced Olive, as she opened the first letter. "What's this written
under it? 'Timoroso.' What a queer name! But see what a sweet face she
has. I wonder who it can be?"
"The letter will probably tell," answered Sara, striking a match to
light the alcohol-lamp. "Go on, I am ready to listen."
"My dearest Helen," read Olive. "Here I am back at school in our
sunshiny old south room in Baxter Hall, with the same jolly set of
girls popping their heads out of their doors, all along the corridor,
to joke with each other; the same old teachers and furniture and
surroundings; the same dear old everything, with one exception--my old
roommate.
"I know you are dying to hear about my new roommate. She is a freshman
by the name of Susannah Talbot, but we have never called her that
since the first day. You will find her photograph enclosed, and can
see for yourself what a shy little rabbit she is.
"Elsie Gayland came into our room while I was showing Susannah where
to put her things as she unpacked. You know how regardlessly outspoken
Elsie is, and how thoroughly saturated with her music. She is worse
than ever this year, and talks almost entirely in musical terms.
"'How are you two going to chord?' she said, abruptly, to Susannah.
'If Sophia were a sheet of music, she would be marked on every score,
_Fortissimo_, because she is so forcible and aggressive. But you are
just the opposite; it seems to me that _Timoroso_ would just suit you.
You do not object to a nickname, I hope? Everybody has to put up with
one here.'
"Susannah blushed and managed to stammer out that she didn't mind, and
ever since then she has been 'Timoroso' to us all. You know Elsie
Gayland. She is the same old Elsie. What the Pied Piper was to
Hamelin town, she is to this school. We all still flock after her in
spite of ourselves, and no matter what she chooses to pipe for us, we
dance after her.
"She has a new fad now--palmistry. Yesterday she showed me a book on
the subject, that she studied all vacation. It is the weirdest looking
thing, bound in black, with white serpents crawling all over the
cover. It made me creep to look at it. She says that she is going to
give a 'Palmistry Evening' soon, whatever that may be, and tell our
fortunes. Timoroso has just come in and says that Elsie is waiting for
me, so with 'these few broken remarks,' and a heart full of love, I
must leave you for the present. Devotedly,
"SOPHIA."
As Olive laid down the letter and took up another, Sara exclaimed, "I
see now why sister wanted us to read them. It is something about
fortune-telling."
"The next letter is dated a week later," said Olive, beginning to read
again.
"It was so lovely of you, Helen, dearest, to write me that good long
letter in answer to the scrap I sent. I have put off answering it
until I could tell you about our palmistry evening which Elsie gave us
last night. She almost got into trouble by passing round little slips
of paper in class, on which was written:
8# XXIV. Lc.
Palmistry.
"Miss Hill caught sight of one as it was being passed to Timoroso, and
called her up to the desk. Seeing that Tim was almost ready to faint
from embarrassment, Elsie spoke up quickly: 'It's mine, Miss Hill. It
is just a reference. I had several slipped in here, between the leaves
of my algebra.'
"Of course it was a reference. You can easily tell what it referred to
when interpreted in the old way. _Eight o'clock sharp. Room 24.
Elsie._
"'A reference to what, Miss Gayland?' asked Miss Hill, in her most
frigid tones.
"'To palmistry,' answered Elsie, calmly. 'A subject which I have been
investigating for some time.'
"With that Miss Hill sent Tim back to her seat, and read us a lecture
on the folly of such things, and the harm of allowing them to absorb
our valuable time. Elsie was cross at some of the things she said, for
she firmly believes in chiromancy. 'There can't be anything wrong in
it,' she declared to us afterward, 'for papa would not have given me
this big, expensive book about it, with all these fine plates. See!
Here is an impression of Gladstone's hand, and lots of celebrated
people. Miss Hill has no right to class all believers in palmistry
with mountebanks and gypsies, and she certainly betrays her ignorance
of a noble science when she mixes it up with clairvoyance and common
fortune-telling.'
"Still, Miss Hill's remarks made some change in Elsie's plans, for
when we gathered in her room at the appointed time, it looked just as
usual, although she had intended to have it darkened and hung with
black curtains.
"After we had all taken our seats, Elsie retired behind a heavy screen
in the corner. She had previously cut two slits in it, through which
we were to thrust our hands. She made us take off our rings, so that
she could not recognise us by them, and commanded absolute silence.
The light was on her side of the screen, and the semi-darkness in
which we sat, added to the breathless silence, made us unnaturally
solemn. The girls motioned me to put my hands through the screen
first; and I wish you could have seen the pantomime they went through
as she enumerated my familiar traits of character. They nodded their
heads in emphatic agreement, each one growing more eager every moment
for her turn, as all recognised the truth of Elsie's reading. Some of
us found that we had very odd propensities, but it was Timoroso who
made the sensation of the evening. When her turn came I could see that
she had become almost frightened at Elsie's remarkable power of
discernment, and was much wrought upon by the impressive silence of
the dimly lighted room.
"After a moment of careful examination Elsie began: 'This is a psychic
hand which shows a delicate constitution, great sensitiveness, and
abnormal nervousness. The life line is very short, the head line good,
but running too far down into the mount of Luna. That may indicate
only unusual imaginative power, or if other lines confirm it, it may
mean a tendency to insanity.' Then she gave a startled exclamation and
paused a moment. 'Oh, girls!' she cried. 'How interesting! I have
never found this mark in a hand before, but it is in one of the
plates.'
"'What?' we cried in chorus, breaking the long-enforced silence.
"'_It is the suicide line!_'
"Poor little Timoroso jerked her hands away, and turned toward us with
a frightened face gleaming through the dusk as white as her collar.
Her distress was pitiful.
"You see, Elsie had been telling so many truths about us, that poor
little Tim believed implicitly in her fortune-telling ability. She
felt that her doom was sealed; that the cruel finger of a relentless
fate had written it so plainly in her tell-tale palm, that all who saw
it might read. She hid her face on my shoulder and sobbed so violently
that it put an end to the seance.
"Elsie had to come out from behind the screen to help soothe her.
'Why, Tim, dear, you mustn't take it so to heart!' she insisted. 'Let
me look at your hands again. There may be plenty of lines to
counteract that one; besides, I am only a beginner, and liable to make
a wrong interpretation.'
"By sheer force of her strong, cheery personality, she calmed Tim
after awhile, and had her laughing like the gayest of us. Nobody but
Elsie could have done it.
"When Miss Hill made an excuse to come in a little after nine o'clock,
we were eating apples and telling riddles as demurely as Quaker
ladies."
[Illustration: "'SHE HID HER FACE ON MY SHOULDER'"]
When Olive had finished reading this letter aloud, she had to read
several more before she came to another mentioning the subject in
which she and Sara were most interested; and after that there were
only occasional paragraphs scattered here and there among pages of
personal news and school happenings.
"I am afraid that Timoroso is going to be ill," wrote Sophia, in one
of those gossipy epistles. "She is as white and listless as a tired
little ghost. She has slept scarcely any since our palmistry evening,
but I did not discover the fact until last night. I woke suddenly to
find her standing by the window in the moonlight, with a blanket
thrown round her. She was catching her breath in long, choking sobs,
and wringing her hands in the greatest distress. The idea that she
must sometime take her own life haunts her night and day. I found that
she had been brooding over it, taking a morbid interest in all the
sensational reports of suicides that she can find in the papers, and
that she has been rereading Cleopatra's experiments with poisons."
* * * * *
"Timoroso's case is growing alarming. I have told Elsie, and she feels
she is directly responsible for her condition, and bemoans her
thoughtlessness in ever telling Tim what she saw in her hand. She is
doing all she can now to cheer Tim up and ridicule her out of her
morbidness. She is always running in with some funny speech to make us
laugh. Of course, all the other girls follow her example, so that
poor little Tim is the most popular girl in school now; but I catch
her looking at her hand a dozen times a day, with all the horror in
her face that Lady Macbeth's had, over the spots that would not out."
* * * * *
"The crisis came last night. I was awakened by hearing a window
stealthily opened, and the moonlight was bright enough to show me
Timoroso stepping up on the sill.
"'Tim!' I cried, 'what on earth are you doing?' She turned and looked
at me wildly for an instant, and then, running across the room, flung
herself down on the bed beside me.
"'Oh, I am so glad I did not do it!' she cried, with a little moan. 'I
felt that I must jump out of the window. I am glad you called me.
Still,'--she looked round wildly again,--'if I am doomed to such an
awful fate, it will have to come sometime, and it might be better to
have it over with soon, than to live in this constant dread.'
"When I told Elsie about it, this morning, she cried, and that is
something I never saw Elsie Gayland do before.
"'You've got to go with me to see Doctor Phelps about Tim!' she
said. 'I can manage to get leave of absence for both of us in one way
or another, for I am desperate enough to accomplish anything.'
[Illustration: "'LOOKING AT HER HAND A DOZEN TIMES A DAY.'"]
"Doctor Phelps listened like a father to Elsie's confession of her
thoughtlessness in giving Tim such a nervous shock. 'I used to dabble
in phrenology and chiromancy, and such things, when I was young,' he
said. 'As guides to character they are certainly interesting and often
helpful, but, one should remember, by no means infallible.'
"Then he showed us a little mark on his palm. 'Years ago,' he said, 'I
was told that that presaged an early death by drowning. It was to
occur between the ages of twenty and twenty-five, and although I was
on the water almost daily, I never had the slightest accident. I am
over sixty now. Had I been a nervous man, I would probably have
suffered much from my apprehensions of danger. Tell that to Miss
Talbot for her comfort.'
"He walked back to school with us, and while he waited for Miss Hill
to be summoned, Elsie went up-stairs to get her book. When she came
down there was the queerest expression on her face I ever saw. 'I
have made _such_ a mistake!' she said, in an embarrassed way. 'I can
never forgive myself for it. I mistook one line for another, and the
one in Tim's hand means something entirely different from what I
thought it did. That poor little soul has been suffering all this time
solely on account of my ignorance!'
"Doctor Phelps smiled. 'When I was a lad,' he said, 'there was a
couplet in my grammar that I often had to parse, which ran in this
wise:
"'A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring!'"
"Tim's father came to-day. Doctor Phelps telegraphed for him
immediately after leaving here yesterday, and they have taken her away
to a sanitarium. Doctor Phelps said that she was not able to stand the
long journey home, and that her nervous condition was so serious that
she must have immediate attention.
"Elsie is inconsolable, although Doctor Phelps assures her that Tim
would undoubtedly have broken down before the close of the year, from
the mere strain of school life; she is such a delicate little thing."
"Just a month to-day since Tim left. It will be a full year before she
is well and strong again, Doctor Phelps says, and maybe longer. He was
invited to speak in the chapel, this morning, and I wish you could
have heard what he said on the influence of the imagination. He told
some comical stories of patients he had had, who could imagine
themselves possessed of a new disease every week.
"Then he spoke of clairvoyants, and mediums, and fortune-tellers of
every kind. 'It is one of the kindest provisions of Providence,' he
added, 'that we are allowed to see only one minute at a time. Suppose
that we could look ahead into the years, and see some terrible
calamity coming upon us, with the deadly certainty that every
nightfall was bringing it one step nearer. What an agony of
apprehension we would be in as the month approached--then the week,
the day, and finally the hour! What man could stand the strain of such
prolonged torture?
"'Or, suppose it were some joy that we looked forward to. When it came
it would be robbed of its bloom by those long years of constant
anticipation. It is the unexpected good fortune, the bits of happiness
that come to us as complete surprises, which give us the keenest
thrills of enjoyment.'
[Illustration: "'ASKED ME TO HUNT UP ALL THE REFERENCES'"]
"Whatever Doctor Phelps says is law and gospel with Elsie Gayland, and
as she never does anything half-way, I was not surprised when she
walked into my room with her book on chiromancy, and put it in the
fire. As she stood, grimly watching it burn, she said: 'I thought I
should go through the floor when Doctor Phelps called me into the
library just now. He gave me this big concordance, and asked me to
hunt up all the references in my Bible under the words "hand" and
"path," and all the promises for guidance and safety that are given to
those who commit themselves into the Eternal keeping. He wants me to
read them to Timoroso sometime soon, for he says that nothing but an
abiding consciousness that she is in the hollow of an Omnipotent hand
will bring her the peace of mind that is essential to her recovery.'"
* * * * *
Olive gathered the letters together, and as she tied them with the
white and scarlet ribbons, Helen came back from her frosty drive.
"I thought you would want to hear the sequel," she said, smiling at
their eager questions, as she sat down to the cup of steaming
chocolate that Sara poured for her.
"Timoroso is entirely well now. She spent this winter in the south of
France, and I want you to see the calendar she sent me this Christmas.
Such a beautiful little water colour, with the text illuminated as the
old monks used to do it."
Sara and Olive leaned over her shoulder to examine the card Helen took
from her desk, and read the verse together, half under their breath:
"Build a little fence of trust
Around to-day.
Fill the space with loving deeds
And therein stay.
Look not through the sheltering bars
Upon to-morrow;
God will help thee bear what comes
Of joy or sorrow."
Helen did not see the glance that passed between the girls as they
finished reading, but she was not surprised that there was never
anything more said about consulting the clairvoyant at the Metropole.
THEIR ANCESTRAL LATCH-STRING
THEIR ANCESTRAL LATCH-STRING
It was an ideal day for a picnic; mid-June in the heart of the Blue
Grass. On the rose-covered back porch of an old Southern mansion two
pretty girls were enthusiastically preparing for their day's outing.
It did not cloud their happiness that Claribel had to iron her own
shirt-waist for the occasion, or that the dainty lunch Wilma was
packing into the basket would leave the larder almost empty. They had
always been used to that order of things.
But old Mam Daphne, bumping her scrubbing-brush over the kitchen
floor, shook her woolly head sadly. She could remember the time when
every day was a gala day in the old mansion, because it was always
overflowing with guests to be entertained with free-handed
hospitality. Store-room and smoke-house were filled to overflowing
then, and there was a swarm of negro servants always in attendance. It
hurt the faithful old mammy's pride to see one of her young mistress's
daughters bending over the ironing-board, and to hear the other
exclaiming over the fried chicken and frosted spice cake in the picnic
basket, when such luxuries had once been their family's daily fare.
She was their only servitor, now, coming once a week to scrub and
clean.
[Illustration: "IT HURT THE FAITHFUL OLD MAMMY'S PRIDE"]
This morning she looked down the grass-grown walk to the broken-hinged
gate and sighed. She was looking through a bower of climbing roses,
but even the Gloire de Dijon, with its thousands of gold-hearted
blossoms, could not hide the fact that the old place was fast going to
decay.
To Claribel and Wilma, not yet out of their teens, repairs on the old
house did not seem half so important as their own personal ones of
shoe soles and skirt braids. It was their sister Agnes, ten years
older, who shouldered all such worries.
There had been girls in the country place where they lived, girls of
the best old families, too, who, feeling the pinch of poverty that
followed the changed conditions of the South after the war, had gone
away to teach school or learn typewriting. But Agnes, bringing up her
sisters in strict accordance with the old family traditions, carefully
weeded out of their young minds any such tendencies toward
self-support. With the city only fifteen miles away, where they might
have had the society and advantages they longed for, her prejudices
and family pride kept them in their cage of circumstances, waiting
helplessly like two irresponsible little canaries, for some outside
hand to open the door.
[Illustration: "PAUSING IN HER SCRUBBING"]
"Honey," said Mam Daphne, pausing in her scrubbing as Claribel came
into the kitchen for a hot iron, "I'se been studyin' ovah you-all's
case right smaht, lately. You'se done had to move out'n de front o' de
house, count o' de roof leakin', an' you shet up de west wing, so many
windows was broke. Soon you-all will be movin' into de kitchen. Why
don't you sell this great place fo' it goes clean to destruction, an'
buy a little cottage jes' big enough fo' you three chillun? You'd be
so much more comf'table."
"Sell _Marchmont_, Mam Daphne," cried Claribel. "Why, it has never
belonged to any one but a Mason since the days of Boone! Besides," she
explained, with the consideration they had always shown their mother's
old nurse, "there'll be no need for it when sister's book is
published. Last spring, when the _Southern Sentinel_ gave her their
book reviewing to do every week, we discovered that she had been at
work for years on a novel of her own. When that is published she is
going to take us to the city every winter. She'll be so rich and
famous then we'll meet all the lions and people worth knowing. Wilma
and I will study designing and take painting lessons, and we'll go to
parties and concerts and have as many beaux as mamma had when she was
young. And, best of all, we'll repair Marchmont, and you are to come
and live with us again. That is part of sister's plan."
Mam Daphne listened with a look of incredulous wonder on her old face.
"Aw, go 'long, honey, you'se a-foolin' me!" she exclaimed, dipping her
brush into the suds again. But an eager voice in the doorway made her
look up to see the careworn face of the oldest sister.
"Yes, it's true, Mam Daphne," cried Agnes. "I am almost through, now,
and as soon as these noisy children are off to the picnic I shall
begin my last chapter. I am just in the mood for it, and I shall not
even stop to get any lunch."
"Then I'll leave you a devilled egg and a spice cake to nibble on,"
said Wilma, "for there won't be a crust of bread left in the house
when this lunch is taken out of it. I'm glad genius burns. What a
heavenly day this is going to be for all of us!"
As she spoke, they were startled by a loud bang of the knocker on the
big front door. Rarely in their remembrance had the great brass
griffin's head sent that hollow booming through the hall. Since they
had been living in the south wing the neighbours always came to the
side entrance.
"Who can it be at this hour of the morning?" cried Claribel, dropping
her iron and clutching at her light curly hair, which was always in
pretty disorder. "We're none of us dressed to meet strangers. Run, Mam
Daphne! How fortunate you are here to go to the door!"
A moment later the old coloured woman was fumbling at the long unused
bolts, while the girls listened breathlessly at the dining-room door.
It was a lady's voice that reached them. Evidently some one who had
been at the house in its palmy days, for she recognised Mam Daphne as
an old servant.
"I want to see all the young ladies, Daphne," she said. "Tell them
that it is Mrs. Gorham, their mother's old friend and schoolmate, from
Lexington. Tell them I am on my way to Louisville, and have taken the
liberty of stopping off to spend the day, without sending them word."
Then, as if to herself, they heard her say: "I've lived in Kentucky
too long, and enjoyed Alice Mason's hospitality too often not to be
sure of a welcome from her daughters."
Wilma sank down limply in a disconsolate heap on the floor. "Oh,
sister, what _shall_ we do?" she whispered to Agnes. "_Must_ we give
up the picnic, and that glorious ride home by moonlight, when it's
probably the only outing of the kind we'll have this summer? The boys
were going to take their banjos and mandolins, and they counted on us
to help serenade--"
Claribel interrupted her with a grim face. "There's no help for it.
Don't you see, Wilma, that we've got to give it up? Don't you know
that everything fit to eat in the house went into that picnic basket?
We can't go without it, and we can't take it and leave sister to
entertain the company without its help. But oh, it's certainly too
provoking! Why, of all days in the year, should she drop down on us
to-day, when this is the first time she has been here since we were
out of the nursery!"
"I'm afraid there's nothing left for us to do but to keep up the old
traditions, and entertain her in the best style we can, dears," said
Agnes, gently. "Poor mamma's best friend must be showed the
hospitality that she always found here. But, oh, girls, I _did_ hope
to finish that book to-day! It may be weeks before I'm keyed up to
the pitch again where I feel equal to writing the climax as it should
be done."
There were tears in Wilma's eyes as she carried the lunch-basket into
the pantry, but she giggled as, passing the old portraits on the
stairs, as they went up to dress, Claribel shook her fist in their
faces.
"That's what we get for having the latch-string of our ancestors in
our keeping," she exclaimed. "It's pretty well frayed out by this
time, and cannot stand many more strains like this. It seems to me
that we are sort of acting a lie. Mam Daphne will wait on the table
to-day, and Mrs. Gorham will see what a spread we have, and will think
that we live that way all the time."
"Well," said Wilma, hopefully, "we will live that way all the time
when sister's 'Romance of Carrington' is published. How good it will
be to feel able to ask the girls to stay to lunch any time they happen
to drop in, and not have to be wondering if the butter will hold out!"